Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Joining Pippa Jay's Release Day Blitz for "Restless In Peaceville"

My writing chum Pippa Jay's latest book, Restless In Peaceville, is published today. I was delighted to help publicise the release day "blitz" for the print edition.

I've read and really enjoyed a few of Pippa's previous imaginative and entertaining stories and this one will definitely be going on my "to read soon" list.

Blurb:

Welcome to Peaceville, population 2067 and rising...from the grave...

Luke Chester has had enough. He’s the school geek, the girls laugh at him, he’s lost his dead-end job at the pizza place, and in the midst of the world’s messiest divorce his parents don’t even know he exists. An overdose of his mom’s tranquilizers and a stomach full of whiskey should solve all his problems...
But they don’t. Instead, Luke finds himself booted out of the afterlife for not dying a natural death, with nowhere to go but back to his recently vacated corpse and reality. How the hell is he going to pass for one of the living without someone trying to blow his brains out for being one of the undead? And it just gets worse. He’s got to fight his own desperate craving to consume the living, evade the weird supernatural hunter who’s having a field day with the new undeads rising, and there’s this creepy black shadow following him around. Add to that the distraction of female fellow undead Annabelle burning to avenge her own murder, and clearly there’s no rest for the wicked. Jeez, all he wanted to do was R.I.P.

Restless In Peaceville is a young adult zombie story with a twist, set in a Louisiana that never was and released by Lycaon Press on the 20th August, 2014.

A couple of excerpts:
I suppose I should count myself lucky they hadn't started carving me up, and that I'd gone for an overdose rather than throwing myself in front of a truck or out of a window. I'm in damn good condition...for a corpse. Still in one piece as far as I can ascertain, and that ain't easy to determine, let me tell you. You know how an arm or a leg goes after you've sat on it for a while, cutting off the circulation? But before the blood flow starts again and you get pins and needles? That numb heaviness? My whole body is like that. Like every part of me is full of lead. Also, the not breathing is weird. I take a couple of breaths out of habit, for the familiar feeling of air moving in and out of my chest. After that I don't bother. It takes too much concentration and there are other things I need to focus on. Like, what do I do next, for instance? So, what, I'm just gonna lie here? It's an option, but I'd probably give the next person who opens up my drawer a heart attack. I don't want another death on my conscience. Not when I already have my own.
***

A creak is all the warning I'm given before the floor gives way and I plummet through the rotten woodwork like a kingfisher diving through the water. I can't see a thing for dust and chunks of wood, but I know I've gone through the ground floor of the house when I break through a second layer of wood and hit earth. Damn, how long will this body hold up if I keep crashing like this? I lever myself up, and find my head just above ground floor level while more dust and splinters shower down around me. I turn, looking for some way to pull myself back up...and find myself being stared at by three kids. Oh, shit. For a moment we all just gaze at each other, no one sure what to do or who's going to do it first. Then one of the boys, maybe eight or nine and his mouth hanging open points at me and screams, "Zombie!" What else can I do? I yank myself out of the hole and lurch at him, moaning fit to scare them to death. They don't hesitate. Each of them competing for the most piercing holler, they scarper out of the house so fast I expect to see scorch marks from the acceleration.I laugh. Seriously, it's the funniest thing I've seen since I died. Maybe I could get to enjoy this.Pippa's Biography

After spending twelve years working as an Analytical Chemist in a Metals and Minerals laboratory, Pippa is now a stay-at-home mum who writes scifi and the supernatural. Somewhere along the way a touch of romance crept into her work and refused to leave. In between torturing her plethora of characters, she spends the odd free moment playing guitar very badly, punishing herself with freestyle street dance, and studying the Dark Side of the Force.

Although happily settled in the historical town of Colchester in the
UK with her husband of 21 years and three little monsters, she continues to roam the rest of the Universe in her head.